Bridging Organizational Resilience and Management Control Systems - A Systematic Review

Abstract

Organizations have repeatedly faced challenges due to disasters such as pandemics, economic or financial crises, and other unexpected events. One reason why some organizations cope more efficiently than others with such unforeseen circumstances might be found in their resilience design. However, while this has long been the subject of research, there is still no consensus in the literature, and there is no common understanding regarding the definition of the term ‘resilience’, the conceptualizations at the organizational level, and its interaction with management control systems (MCS). This study bridges the MCS and organizational resilience literature and provides a broader understanding of the relationship between the organization and adverse events. To identify relationships between MCS and organizational resilience, we perform a systematic review of organizational resilience conceptualizations and definitions, supplemented by current empirical findings using a content analysis and a citation network analysis. We investigate different approaches to achieve organizational resilience objectives by using MCS (especially Simons’ levers of control framework) to show relationships, trade-offs, complementarities, and substitutes, and provide initial approaches for applying complementarity theory to explain the relationship between MCS design and use, and organizational resilience. We reveal gaps between organizational resilience and MCS literature, and provide avenues for future research, in particular a preliminary roadmap for empirical research. Our findings suggest that integrating organizational resilience measures into MCS might be beneficial for organizations to manage resilience at the organizational level and achieve complementary effects. In addition, organizations could increase their resilience capacity by building resilience-oriented management controls (ROMC).